News Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger retires, effective immediately — also steps down from BOD, two co-CEOs step in

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The writing was on the wall when the stock price tanked after Intel started being transparent about foundry costs. The problems there have long been obvious to anyone with the tiniest clue about silicon manufacturing, but we don't live in a world where money people are competent. Here we are though with him being forced out (whether literally or just his choice to self sacrifice) before even getting a chance to complete his initial plan.

I don't really think he's been a perfect CEO, but given the state of Intel and publicly traded market realities he seemed to be doing as well as can be expected.

The only positive, if it remains intact, is the requirements added to the Chips Act money don't allow Intel to sell off IFS in the near term.
 
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phead128

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I think the latest Fed chip act money blocks them from doing so. But with republicans taking over they may let them if there is some grift to be had.
The Fed chip acts doesn't prevent spinning out as a separate private entity, it just says Intel must have 50.1% ownership/voting rights if it is spun out as a separate entity, or 35% shareholder if the spinned out foundry goes IPO. (source) It's a forgone conclusion that IFS will be spinned out as a separate entity to offload the costs from balance sheet, just now it's 49.1% offload as opposed to 100% offload.
 
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phead128

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18A is tape-out in just 6 months, so Pat Gelsinger retiring before tape-out means that 18A is terrible shape, he has been gaslighting the board and public the entire time. "More time to see results", but who set the timelines? 5 nodes in 4 years?
 
Co-CEO's? LoL. There is a reason there aren't co-Captains on a ship.
It's temporarily and a common practice. The job of CEO is to much for a single person to do and still do their other important job. So they split the job in half and have two other senior executives do it while also doing their other major job until the board hires a new CEO.
 
To people quiping about stock prices, that is the difference between a public and private company.

Public companies can create stock and sell it as a way to generate capital for growth or just to pay bills. This makes stock price incredibly important to their ability to grow and invest. When that stock plummeted it signaled that Intel could no longer use stock offerings to cover revenue shortfalls vs expenses.
 
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Kamen Rider Blade

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Yeah, this is pretty alarming. Intel has been struggling with execution in a variety of ways since 2014. The architectures released in the past three years of Gelsinger being at the helm were mostly done and designed before he even got started. I'm not at all confident in Intel's ability to correct things with some other CEO instead of Pat, at least in the near term. It could be a decade or more to recover, if ever.
I believe Pat Gelsinger suffered from Bob Swan's screw ups, and he's a fall guy for having to clean up Bob Swan's messes and not making Intel look good.

I don't think they should've fired Pat, he still needed more time to clean up Bob's mess IMO.

Pat has the right idea with Intel Foundry and chasing US gov't investments. The former should have happened a decade ago at least.
Bob Swan could've done that, but he chose not to.

That's how TSMC got ahead... that and consistent execution. But it's ironic that just as Intel floundered (refinements of 14nm for years), TSMC managed to do better.
The old story of the "Tortoise & the Hare".

TSMC was the Tortoise, Intel was the Hare.

Intel was leading for a VERY long time, but in a marathon, TSMC got focused by Apple and worked on minor NODE improvements every year and they eventually won the race.

Now that TSMC is using the philosophy instilled by Apple, they are leading by ALOT.
 

Loadedaxe

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Not a good sign to switch leaders in the midst of a crisis. Looks like AMD has won the CPU market, and in my opinion they deserve it.
Like those 9000 series prices?
Without any competition they will be more expensive next round. AMD has only been relevant for the last 6 years. before that it was all Intel minus a few skus for AMD, remember what AMD use to sell chips for?
 

Thunder64

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Like those 9000 series prices?
Without any competition they will be more expensive next round. AMD has only been relevant for the last 6 years. before that it was all Intel minus a few skus for AMD, remember what AMD use to sell chips for?

Guess you never heard of this thing called the Athlon. That and its succesors beat the crap out of Intel many years ago.
 
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Poor Pat. Can we assume that 18A is broken too? I read about his career on Wikipedia - it seemed highly unlikely that he was a fit for the job. If they were looking to hire a technical person - why not at least somebody with PHD?
 

Thunder64

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Poor Pat. Can we assume that 18A is broken too? I read about his career on Wikipedia - it seemed highly unlikely that he was a fit for the job. If they were looking to hire a technical person - why not at least somebody with PHD?

Dude's an engineer. Doesn't get much better than that.